Three things I learned from the Tohoku Earthquake

It has been two years since the earthquake and Tsunami hit the east part of Japan in 2011.  I have experienced two big earthquakes in my life.  One was Hanshin-Awaji in 1995, and the other this in 2011.
I’ve been fortunate enough to live through these earthquakes, however millions of peoples’ lives have seriously been changed because of the two earthquakes.  Some lost their lives, some lost their love ones, some lost their homes, and some lost their jobs.

There are three things I’m sure to say through these experiences.
One is that we really can’t expect what will happen in the future, and those events can be totally uncontrollable.  Nothing can be 100% sure.  It is therefore a good idea to avoid too much concentration of our assets.

Secondly, we are facing so many risks consciously or unconsciously, and the sensitivity towards those risks varies a lot.  I learned it through the past two years especially from the argument with the risk of radiation.  My wife and I have very different views especially on this matter, and it is almost impossible to close the gap.  Through tons of discussions, I came to respect her view and her will to move out of Tokyo for the sake of our daughter even though my personal view is different.  It is sometimes wise not to try to change someone’s mind but to find a way to cope with it.

Lastly, it is much healthier for us to focus on what we are doing than on unknown risks.  Being cautious is sometimes smart, but being worried is not productive.  Life is short, so let’s focus on making the world better.  That should be the best tribute for those who suddenly lost their lives in the earthquake.  The pic above is from Kamaishi city and it says, "We'll make this town better than before!"

May peace come for everyone tonight whose life has been affected by the earthquake.

MessageLeaf @ SF JapanNight

We participated in the pitch contest at “SF Japan Night SemiFinal”.  The following is my 5 min presentation slide then.  The competition was to pick the 6 finalist teams among 17 to go to SF.  We could not make it although I have nothing to regret with my presentation.

MessageLeaf presentation @sf japannight semi final from Eisuke Suzuki

<”Real Fight” - Lovely nature of the competition>

In the real business world, it sometimes matters who you know and where you belong to more than what you know and what you do.  However, this competition cares what you do, why you do, and how much you look promising.

It was more like going into a real fight of 5 minutes 1 round boxing match, and I loved this format.  You would be literally shut up if your presentation went even 1 second beyond 5 min.  This is much harder than giving a 1 hour speech.

I was so nervous that I felt my stomach ache when I came back to my seat after finished my presentation.  I had not had such an experience.

<Is MessageLeaf a Japanized service?>

I talked to several judges to listen to what they thought about MessageLeaf.  The take home message was that they liked it but felt it too “Japanized (Japanese specific)” and did not think very scalable.

As all the judges were foreigners and knew Japanese culture, it is understandable that they thought being shy in front of others was Japanese specific problem.  Our hypothesis is that there surely are many foreigners who are as shy as Japanese, not showing their thoughts or feelings in the socialized tool such as comment field.  Such shy folks are just invisible in this socialized web community.  We also think that even for the people who are not shy, there surely are some moments that they prefer 1 on1 communication depending on the subject.  However, this can be proved only through accumulated facts.  We need the results to show that this service can truly be international.

As for the scalability, I think the definition of the term matters here.  MessageLeaf surely is not as “scalable” in terms of # of users as many social tools.  We value more the depth of messages than the number of users as we think our users are on the same page.  Such depth and meaningfulness of the communication would result in a form of business.  However, this also can be proved only through accumulated facts.

It was great to know that people tend to think this service not international or scalable, anyway.  That means we are not competing in an apparently sexy market, which is good as we have good time to strengthen our service model.

Finally, it was a great experience to know that there still are many promising Japanese startups who are young, highly motivated, with a conscience.  Most of them did a great presentation in English, and showed good insights with their services or products.  You can see their services or products here. 

I wish a great success in their next presentations to the finalists, and would like to show my appreciation to btrax who held and managed this great event!

Emerge of "Global Middle Class" and the death of "Old Middle Class"

Happy New Year!!

We saw full of political events in 2012. U.S.A, China, Russia, France, and Japan had major elections to choose our national leaders.  All the developed countries (U.S., France, and Japan) have been struggling economic downturn since “Lehman Shock”, and it seems to be the downturn is not temporary but more structural.  The leaders in these countries are in the same boat in a sense, but what is the real issue?

I was introduced an interesting book last year.  The book is “The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism” written by Robert B. Reich in 1991.

Reich describes how the U.S. achieved the equality of wealth through its high economic growth through 1950s, and that equality has been deteriorated and “the death of middle class” has occurred through the globalization of economy.

I think that this returning of “disparity of wealth” in developed countries essentially caused by “the global equalization of wealth”.  What we have seen in “BRICs” is exactly what have happened in U.S. in the 50s.

Let’s check if this statement holds through the analysis of annual income distribution of U.S., Japan, China, and India using “Gapminder”.

（http://www.gapminder.org/downloads/income-distribution-2003/）

Here is 1970.

In 1970, both China and India were very poor with the annual income distribution concentrated around a bit less than 1000 dollar.  The U.S. seems to have thick “middle class” concentration around 20K dollar level.  Japan surprisingly had the most “unequal” distribution among these four countries.

In 1985, we see centralization and growth of income in Japan.

The next graph is year 2000.

Japan accomplished its “the middle class centralization” at this stage.  The income is normally distributed with high concentration at 20-30K dollar.

Meanwhile, China and India started catching up the tails of the U.S. and Japan, and a mini concentration started to be shown at the level just below 10K which is “right shoulder” of the distributions of China and India.  The U.S. used to be normally distributed, but it started showing some concentration at just below 10K level which is “left shoulder” of its distribution.  I think the new but small concentrations at just below 10K at this point are “the new global middle class”.

It is a pity that I couldn’t figure out how to generate the graph of 2010, but I firmly believe that the total distributions of China and India shifted toward right to catch up the U.S. and Japan, and the concentrations at around 10K level become even clearer.

The thing is that this trend is very irreversible, changing the current social system to fit with the new form of income distribution is the real issue for the political leaders of "developed countries".